white, white noise
by but seriously
Summary: So they bury Katherine, and life goes on. / klaus/caroline, bonnie, elena, katherine, tyler. POST 5x11


**yay notes:** I casually typed this out right in the middle of Business Comm class, drunk from Klaroline finally finding the right time, right place, right equipment. It's literally been two years since I last wrote smut; I'm so embarrassed. (hides face)

P/S: HAPPY KLAROPOCALYPSE.

* * *

**white, white noise**

.

.

So they bury Katherine.

On a bright sunny day, with flowers blooming everywhere in the cemetery, but not in any of their hands. Damon doesn't show up; the only time he even brings Katherine up is when he'd been adamant about her _not _being buried on sacred Salvatore grounds, and Stefan… well, Stefan doesn't say anything.

Tyler's standing a little way off, sneaking glances at her every so often, and she can't _help _it – she glances back, yes, but the gaze never lingers. That spark, the one that's made her want to rush into his arms and just kiss and kiss and _kiss_ is gone, replaced by some kind of white noise in her head.

They watch the coffin being lowered into the earth with somber faces. Caroline reaches for Stefan's hand (it's not Tuesday, but his face says otherwise). She doesn't reach for Tyler's.

And you would think that Elena would be glad to see Katherine go, but she could've sworn for a second there, the briefest, most nano of seconds, she looks a little sad.

.

.

And she thinks of Klaus.

She doesn't mean to, but it just happens. They're back in college and things are weird, but weird is normal and normal, what does she even know about it anyway? If this is what normal is – Bonnie chanting witchy incantations before bed, Elena suddenly acquiring a taste for brandy, Rebekah touring Whitmore with Matt, their pinkies brushing together so lightly Caroline's heart twists – then, you know, whatever. She'll take it.

She supposes remembering how Klaus' breath hot and wet against her neck would be normal. His hands roaming everywhere, down her stomach, the side her breasts; lifting her up so easily like a question, her legs wrapping around him like it's the answer.

"Caroline!"

Her elbow slips off the desk and the sound of her wrist banging down on wood practically wakes the whole class. They cranes their necks, wary now that Professor Alzberry is looking coolly at her. "The answer?"

"The—the answer?" Caroline stammers, looking around at Bonnie. Bonnie shoots her a sympathetic look and she's mouthing the answer but Caroline can't make it out. Elena doesn't even try – she's looking down at her nails.

Professor Alzberry sighs and adjusts her glasses. "Come back down to earth, Caroline."

.

.

And she _dreams_. The everyday things like taking out the trash, working in the library with Elena, visiting Steven on the weekends – they're all sepia-toned nothingness, dragging on for so long that she feels like weeks goes by before she even wakes up.

She sees Klaus too, a black silhouette against Technicolor vibrancy, and those are the dreams that she wakes gasping, an ache in her center, sweat shining on her skin. They're all flashes of light and swatches of colour burning so bright they glare right through her closed eyelids, and she wants to wake up because these dreams, it feels _too real_, her arching into him and him moving slowly on top of her, eyes shut tight.

.

.

Elena's harder around the edges, too. Caroline chalks it up to the breakup but she already seems so over it: flirting with the TA and never coming home before midnight, dancing shoes always worn out come morning light.

Caroline envies this, this indifference, and begs her to bring them one night. "You can't be having all the fun, Elena. We're supposed to be out in the world doing indecent things, like, _together_!"

Even Bonnie agrees, her chic hair swinging as she tilts her head thoughtfully. "I did just get that new dress last week."

You know, after she burned all her old clothes and chopped her hair off.

Elena looks pleased, even helps them apply their eye shadow all smoky and dark, and Caroline kind of gulps when she sees Elena shimmying in front of the mirror.

"You look kinda like Katherine."

Elena giggles. "Do I?"

.

.

So they dance, and they laugh and they drink – in more ways than one.

Bonnie looks kind of disapproving, but by the time her sixth jelly shot is burning down her throat she has her hands thrown up, caution swept away with the music vibrating in her skin, and when Elena pulls Caroline away she just sends a wagging finger in their direction before dancing off somewhere.

Caroline's never done this before; put her lips to a boy's neck in the middle of mass of gyrating hips and pulsating light, but Elena's holding her arm, steadying her as she takes her first bite. She can hear Elena's own teeth breaking the skin on the other side of the boy's neck, and it feels so erotic, it feels so real—

.

.

"—so real," she gasps, Klaus' teeth nipping at her breast while his warm hand kneads the other.

She's dizzy and breathless and can't help but loosen her thighs enough to slide herself down Klaus' hips. He groans into her skin, his forehead resting in the column of her neck, and when he looks at her his eyes are a little feral, a little dark.

"Of course it's real," Klaus says hoarsely. His arms hold her in place, and if the bark of the tree she's held up against burns her back she doesn't notice. "I'm here, aren't I?"

"Are you?" Caroline gasps when his tongue laves against her nipple before taking it into his mouth, slow and wet and hot. Her panties are soaked through as she bucks, moving along the rigid bump of him, and it's all so much that she lets out a little cry. The sun-dappled leaves shiver above her, flitting in and out of her vision as white, throbbing want courses through her.

Klaus puts a hand down between them and she immediately misses the way their hips fit together. But then his finger finds her clit and she bucks under his touch, and her nails rake down his back from the friction of it all.

"I made you a promise," Klaus says, panting hard now as her butterfly kisses work up his neck. "You wouldn't want me to have to take it back, would you?"

In their position it almost sounds like he wants her to – she peeks at him and his eyes look back imploringly and—nope, no, she's Caroline goddamn Forbes and she doesn't do take backs, she's made of plans and steel, of moving boxes packed just right, of organizers used up just midway through the year; she's in _college—_

Klaus pushes her panties aside and slides his finger inside her and she cries out, biting down on his neck. She tastes blood hot and thick on her tongue, and it's _maddening_ how much she wants him.

He seems to know what she's thinking, because he has such a grin on his face and God she wants to stop thinking right now. She rakes desperate fingers through his hair and pulls him in for a kiss, tongues glossing together, but it's slower than she would have imagined him capable of, not with the way his finger – _oh_, two fingers now – curl inside her. She takes his tongue into her mouth and sucks eagerly, and he actually _sighs_ against her lips. She's caught up in it, drinking in the steady pressure of his thumb against her clit; the way his other hand massages her breast.

"Tell me what you want, love," Klaus mutters, teeth bared. "Just tell me."

"I want—I _want_—" She's rocking her hips but it's not enough, she wants to be filled with him, wants to feel him stretch her insides; wants to lose herself in him, with him. She grunts when their teeth clash together and whimpers when he licks along her bottom lip like an apology.

"Come for me, Caroline," he says, and closes his eyes. He presses his thumb down on her clit, fingers pumping in tandem to his strokes, and she tenses up, her thighs tremble; she's _right there_ on the precipice of an orgasm. Caroline clenches around his fingers, the way she cries out his name loud to her ears, and then she's gone, baby gone.

Klaus brushes her matted hair away from her face, probably enjoying the way she comes with his name on her lips. The trees rustle once more as her quivering thighs still, and when he sets her down she rests her forehead on his naked shoulder for what feels like a long, long time.

Her sweat is just starting to cool on her skin when she lifts her head. Klaus is looking down at her with so much tenderness in his eyes that she can't help it – she cups a hand to his face, and he leans into it.

"You – you didn't…" she says softly.

"It's alright," Klaus responds in kind, but she can feel him, hard against her leg. He aches for her, in more ways that one she knows, but he won't make this moment about him.

_I want your confession_, she remembers him saying, and her heart? It surges with a sudden, swift affection, and she presses a soft kiss to his lips. "Let's rectify that."

"Caroline?"

She unbuckles his belt and yanks it off; hears it land with a soft thud on cool dirt and dry grass. Her fingers find his zipper and she pulls it down, and Klaus is so still – she can't even hear him breathe. "Caroline."

She strokes the length of him and his jaw clenches, and what do you know, she likes it. Likes the way his eyes start to close with every pump of her hands cupped around him, the way her name falls from his lips in one shaky breath, and suddenly he's lifting her up and her back scrapes against the tree and it burns—she hisses not in pain, but in the sudden loss of heat between them, and he gives her a quick kiss: _one moment, sweetheart._

But he's wrong; it's less than a moment later that Caroline feels herself sinking down on him and she mewls out his name at how full she fills, almost uncomfortably so. He pull his hips back a little, lets her shift into a more pleasurable position, and the next time she sinks her body down on his it's just so gratifyingly _good_ in the way his eyes screw shut and her fingers tug at the hair in the nape of his neck.

Klaus thrusts into her again and she lets out a moan, and another one, and another one with every single rock of his hips, sinfully slow, her calves brushing against his back, and her fingers scratching down his sweat-slicked chest. He starts moving faster, her name becomes a hymn that he whispers so desperately in her ear, _Caroline Caroline Caroline Caroline Caroline—_

A violent pleasure rolls through her as his hips jerk, and she feels him so deep inside her that she feels herself slide up the tree, feels her fingers pierce her skin. Her name turns into something broken, strangled in his throat as he comes, still inside her, and she feels her legs wrap around him tighter, taking her with him. Her orgasm is different this time, longer somehow, and her forehead falls against his as she realizes this is not like the hard fucking he'd given her with his fingers earlier – his lips had pressed against her shoulder, her breath had mingled with his, breathing in the air he breathed out, his hands caressing her back in a way that can only be described as making _love,_ but it couldn't be, no, because she's not—

His finger finds her clit and he gives her one last stroke and all thought flees her mind. Klaus is breathing hard, and so is she, the smell of sweat and sex and sap and pine overwhelming her senses. She opens her eyes and so does he, their bodies still locked in an almost tender embrace.

They are well and truly wrecked.

Later, when they're both dressed – she zips her jacket all the way to the top, chiding him for tearing one of her _very favourite_ tops, but he just pulls her towards him and mumbles against her lips, "Does it really matter now, love?"

And she thinks, _No, I suppose not_ as she kisses him back, and it's desperate and fleeting and achingly romantic and goodbye all in one.

.

.

A slap of files against a desk, a scraping of chairs, and it's another day gone.

Bonnie wants to spend the weekend back home with Jeremy, and Elena flits off somewhere, her hair curled illustriously. This leaves Caroline with a mound of assignments that she can't believe she'd let pile up like that.

She lowers her nose into the borrowed library book as she makes her way back to her room and reminds herself: This is good. This is real.

Tyler's waiting for her on her bed, and she sets her book down and hangs her coat up, saying nothing.

"Caroline," he says, and it's awkward how cautious he sounds, how apologetic, how loving.

He reaches for her hand and she lets him guide her down the bed with him, and she rests her ear against his chest, closes her eyes to the way she used to just love listening to his heartbeat, but this time, she hears nothing but white noise.


End file.
